Thursday, November 24, 2016

Today, a blessing



Gratitude is a door into timelessness.
Stopping in wonder,
letting gratefulness swell in your heart,
rise in your throat,
and press against the back of your eyes,
pulls you through the moment
into the deep reality.

Beyond everything else,
and underneath it all,
We Belong to God
and We Belong to Each Other.

May today be filled with glimpses
that break through 
noise and division,
anxiety and frustration,
distraction, blame and fatigue,
to this fundamental truth:

These people belong to you
and you to them,
we all belong to God,
this whole wide world,
and life is a gift,
abundance beyond measure,
to be shared and received.
Each breath and touch,
each laughter and tear,
each taste and texture,
drawing us in, opening us up,
to receive, respond, rejoice.

Pause there for a moment.
Read it again if it helps.
May you transcend and descend today.

And when you forget,
that you belong to God and these others,
may someone see past your defenses and bluster,
to your longing soul,
and may the Spirit gently nudge you back,
to your true home,
the space you are known and loved in God.

And when it’s a challenge,
may the grace of deep belonging hold you fast,
console your disappointment,
and give you a peek past their bluster
into the longing soul of another,
who belongs to God and you,
even while they’re forgetting it just now.

Gratitude is a door into timelessness.
pulling you through the moment
into the deep reality.
And these words: “Thank you,”
masquerading as simple, even trite,
are a mighty invocation,
a holy and powerful homecoming,
returning us to each other,
with whom we share all life and blessing,
and resuming us in God,
from whom all life and blessing comes,
and to whom all life and blessing returns.



Happy Thanksgiving.

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Still...

A letter to my congregation. 




Beloved ones,

I want to tell you what happened to me last week.  
On a Sunday morning, after a whirlwind 48 hours that included two funerals and a Saturday Evening Prayer service, I headed for the airport.  I was going to meet three other spiritual directors for a three day retreat at a monestary in Kentucky, before heading to the National Youth Worker’s Convention in Cincinnatti where we would do spiritual direction with youth workers, and I would lead a workshop on Sabbath.
I felt like canceling.

I had so much to do, I thought, I would certainly be behind if I left then. Lots of people needed me, and I felt desperate about not being connected to social media for three days, as the country was spinning post-election and so many big and tense things were unfolding.  I was exhausted, but I couldn’t stop going - moving, thinking, talking, acting, and the thought of setting everything down was very unsettling.


This something I have learned about Sabbath: When I think I am least able to take a break, that is the time I most need to stop.

I landed in Kentucky and drove to the middle nowhere (ie, Trappist, KY). When I entered the monastery, my cell phone coverage cut out, and the calls I had to return, the emails I meant to send, the conversations and tasks I’d left hanging, were cut off. It was then I learned the next three days would be spent in silence.

Sabbath day begins at sundown in the Jewish tradition. As soon as the sun hits the horizon, what is done is done, what is undone stays undone. There is no “finishing up” first; you simply start.  That’s a lovely sentiment, and now it was forced upon me by the lack of internet, phone, and SPEAKING.

I went to bed and awoke to the "silent" day ahead of me. The whole day my mind was a noisy cacophony. My gut was in knots, my soul felt clenched.  As I walked and slept and read and bumped about, I wondered how I would ever feel quiet.  The day ended in a candlelit Compline service, listening to the Trappist monks chant the Psalms.
I slept like a baby.

The second day was glorious. 
I walked 5 miles, sharing the woods with wild turkeys and deer, squirrels and birds, the loud sound of my own feet tromping through the leaves and across fields of harvested corn and hay, and the wind singing in my ears.  I read and prayed, colored and wrote, and gulped in great breaths of air and silence till I began to sense I could feel full and satisfied.

The third day was a gift – I visited Thomas Merton’s hermitage and grave, and felt settled into the silence as a friend. I felt myself breathing deeply and trusting. I felt my heart open and my stomach calm.
We say when we stop God will meet us.
That keeps on proving true.

The rest of my week was spent at a convention center in the city, meeting one on one with people and listening deeply to their lives and living, noticing together what God was up to, celebrating and grieving together.  In other words, the next three days were spent practicing and remembering that we belong to God, and we belong to each other, all of us.  

The week was capped off gathered in a room with youth workers and pastors, sharing stories and learnings of Sabbath that our community has experienced, and watching people’s imaginations open up to what might be in their own lives and congregations.  When we stop, I said, God will meet us.

I returned Sunday night feeling grounded, awake, and open to God. And I returned really deeply trusting that God’s love is the biggest and truest thing, and so grateful and thrilled that we get to be part of it.




Advent begins this week. 
It's your turn to be reminded: When we stop, God will meet us. 
Advent is season of waiting in darkness for the coming of God,  it is a choice to keep stopping, in the midst of the holiday noise and chaos, and finding the stillness that connects us to our longing for God. 

Our theme this year is STILL…
Still…there is hope. Still…there is peace. Still…there is joy.
Still…there is love. Be Still and know that I am God.
 

I encourage you to come to worship all four weeks of Advent.
If you are a Sunday only person, come Saturdays too.
If you are a Saturday only person, come Sundays too.

Holiday chaos is crazy.  End of year busyness is pressing. We are in a bumpy time in our country, and the noise around us feels loud and incessant. The world is filled with pain.
But still… God’s love is the biggest and truest thing. 
And still…when we stop, God will meet us.

Come into the stillness where we are rooted and grounded in the love of God who came to share all of life with us. 
Come into the waiting where we get to be honest about our anxiety and hear again how there is no fear in love. 
Come and rest. 
Come, let us stop together.

This Advent, we will be with Mary, Zechariah, Elizabeth and Joseph, watching what God was doing in their lives. We will be singing our Advent songs, and holding space for prayer and silence, and we will be collecting symbols to hold throughout the week, inviting our souls into stillness.
For God alone my soul waits in silence. From him comes my salvation. (Ps. 62:1)

And when Christmas comes, we will lift our heads and open our eyes, grounded, awake, breathing deeply, and trusting, and we will celebrate that at every moment and in all things, God-with-us is with us.  

I will meet you there,
Kara



Saturday, November 12, 2016

Come, you weary ones...



"Come to me all you who are weary
and are carrying heavy burdens,
and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
for I am gentle and humble in heart,
and you will find rest for your souls.
For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."
Matthew 11:28-30

Being a congregation that practices Sabbath means when Jesus says Come to me, we answer, Yes. OK. We will come.  We will lay down our burdens and our pride; we will admit our weariness, and we will welcome your rest. We won’t wait until we are sick or dying or out of our mind. We wont let rest become a last resort, a contingency plan, a life-saving measure. We will come now. We will begin here. Yours is the way and work we choose.
 

Tonight, we at LNPC shared some reminders with each other:

1. Worry is practicing fear. 
Worry trains us to fear by saying over and over again, “What if… what if… what if…”
Rest is practicing trust. 
Rest trains us to trust by saying over and over again, “Even if… Even if… Even if…”

2. Rest is where our life begins from. The Jewish day begins at sundown.
Rest is not a reward for hard work or something you do when you can’t push yourself a second longer. It comes first.
We begin in trust.
We begin the waking day already having experienced these truth that infants already know:
My needs will be met.
I can sleep when I am tired.
I can eat when I am hungry.
I can trust.
I can close my eyes without fear.
I am held.
I belong to these people. They belong to me.
The world is filled with beauty and wonder and love.

And when we wake, all our work and efforts and living flows from this place.

3. Rest is not an end; it is a beginning.
Rest is not laziness, on the contrary, it motivates action.  It gets you in touch with what you need - crying, laughter, sleep, a friend, and it gets you in touch with the world: stop and see.
And then rest restores you and fills you so that you can go out and act from a grounded place, with right focus and perspective, creative, imaginative, alive and awake.
It reminds you whose you are and who you are, and guides you in the world.

4. The Bible often uses “the rest of God” as a synonym for “salvation.”
Rest is what being saved feels like.  Rest is being saved. 
What are you weary of? 
What burdens are you carrying?
What do you need saving from?


5. The way of God is the way of rest
Taking Jesus’ yoke means joining Jesus, and carrying what he carries into the world: the embodiment of complete belonging to God and belonging to others.
It is a restful, easy way, because it is the way we are designed to live:
Where "the other" is not threat, object or burden, but my sister, brother, friend.
Where there is enough and it is meant to be shared.
Where love has the first and final word.
Where the end it is all heading toward is wholeness and connection.
Whether we forget or not, God's redemption and love is already and always happening.
We trust this. We live always into, out of, and toward, this reality.

6. We've been practicing for this.
Jesus is God with us. With us in joy and with us in suffering.
With us in sin: when the division and the dehumanization we experience and inflict on ourselves and thrust on each other, are front and center.
Our God, who took on death so that all could have life,
is with us now,
still taking on death so all can have life.

We meet Jesus Christ, who is with us and for us, when we are with and for each other.
Around us are people hurting, people afraid,
people feeling lost and confused, or angry and overlooked.
Some people are feeling their very lives at risk.
The opportunities to be with and for each other are everyday apparent: moments for kindness, human connection, seeing and hearing each other, standing with each other, offering support, breaking down barriers, reaching past comfort zones, sharing gratitude, offering blessings... they are close to the surface right now. Seize them.

7. Letting go of illusions is part of salvation.
Right now we can see how easy it is to put our security in things other than God.
Not just in all the usual things we think of providing security, or even in things like wise leaders or common sense, but in the good faith of human beings. In some idea of basic kindness, in some trust that what we think should be will be.
It’s is easy to think everything will be all right when we feel alright.
And when we don't feel alright, when those things that felt foundational get taken away, it’s easy to feel like nothing can be trusted.

But God is with us in all of that too.  In fact, God is thrilled to welcome us into disillusionment, where we are made real, and honest, and repentant, and ready.

And the call to see and hear each other, to stand alongside each other,
to embody the love we know is the source, core, and destination of it all,
that call doesn’t change – that call is still, always and already our call.  That work is already and always now.

8. Rest until you trust.
That work is already and always now...
But not from weary people,
strapped to a yoke of fear.
Not from heavy burdened people,
dragging a load of division and disgust,
sorrow or suspicion,
vengeance or insulated apathy.

Remember what we said: 
When things feel most urgent, most pressing, most despairing, this is not the time to panic, talk faster, run harder. Strive further.
On the contrary, this is the time to stop.
To be still.  To rest.
To “reorient your being to the one who loves us.”  This is what Sabbath is for.

9. We are being set free.
God’s way is not our way.
All true transformation comes through weakness, futility and impossibility.
Let the brokenness be revealed that it might be healed.
Lest we forget, we don’t have a triumph and might faith, we have a death and resurrection faith.
This God always acts from despair to bring hope. From brokenness to bring wholeness. From impossibility to bring newness.
It’s our job to remind each other of that.

10. So, rest. Now. It's ok. 
Get outside. Breathe the air. Go near water. Take a nap.  Curl up with music. Cuddle your dog. Put down the phone. Turn off the computer and the TV.  Soak in a tub. Look into someone else's eyes for 60 seconds without looking away.  Look up at the sky.  Look inside. Breathe.

Jesus says, "Come to me..."
Enter into the rest of God.
The salvation of God is always, already at work here.

“Are you tired?
Worn out?
Weighed down by heaviness?
Come to me.
Get away with me and you will recover your life.
I will show you how to take a real rest.
Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it.
Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.
I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you.
Keep company with me and you will learn to live freely and lightly.”

(Mt. 11:28-30 adapted from The Message)

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Election Night



Now we know. 
We've been hiding how broken we are for a long time. 
It's out. No more lies and pretending. 
We are a hot mess and the whole world knows it.
There is some relief in having the secret finally out for all to see.
Resurrection can only come after death. 
I am not being hyperbolic.

Here's how I parent tomorrow: 

My dear, love is always the biggest, truest thing. No matter what.
And now I have to tell you something.


When humans get afraid we turn against each other and try to feel big by making other people feel small. We try to hold onto our power and the things that make us feel safe, even if it means hurting other people. That’s what fear does. It tells us we are in this alone and other people are our enemy.  

And fear won last night.
And I am really, really sad. 

But fear doesn’t win me. 
Fear doesn’t win this family. 
And fear doesn’t win you. 
I am sad. 
But I am not afraid.

You belong to God. 
God came into all pain and death with us so we would never be alone. And the way God works is not by making people feel comfortable and strong and safe, but always to bring life out of death. Always hope out of hopelessness. Always. 
We get to be part of that. 
And now is our time to shine. 

No matter what anyone in charge ever says, or does, or tries to get other people to say or do, the truth of God will never, ever change:
we belong to God and we belong to each other. All of us.

So here’s what we do:
When we get sad we will cry. And when we get scared we will remind each other that fear doesn't win us.  And the rest of the time, we will be truth tellers and hope sharers. We will be friends and neighbors. We will let love make us so brave! We will stand with those who are suffering. We will use the power we have, the voice we have, to help those whose voice gets ignored or taken away. We will not allow walls to be built between us, and we will not accept that people are their worst words or actions. 

Every chance we get we will remind each other that fear is a liar, 
and love is the biggest, truest thing.  
God is already, always doing this, no matter who is in charge. 
We will be part of what God is always, already doing. 

That is what we will do.

Tuesday, November 8, 2016

Our Election Week Plan



"To bless means to say good things. We have to bless one another constantly. Parents need to bless their children, children their parents, spouses their partners, friends their friends. In our society, so full of curses, we must fill each place we enter with our blessings. We forget so quickly that we are God's beloved children and allow the many curses of our world to darken our hearts. Therefore we have to be reminded of our belovedness and remind others of theirs. Whether the blessing is given in words or with gestures, in a solemn or an informal way, our lives need to be blessed lives."
- Henri Nouwen

We, the people of Lake Nokomis Presbyterian Church, are choosing to live in the real reality this week. We are spending the week BLESSING as our form of seeking to embody the truth that we all belong to God and we all belong to each other (i.e. the Kingdom of God).
  
WHAT BLESSING IS:

1- Blessing first acknowledges that everything comes from God. 
 it exists in God’s world and is part of this whole that God has put together. 

2- And then blessing sees a thing as it is, in its fullness, the darkness and the light of it, and embraces it.   
It holds it up to God’s care, and it enjoins it to be even more fully itself, to live as it was created to live.  (Eg., Hi there Squirrel! You are beautiful in all your nose-twitching, nut-burying, tree-planting, traffic-dodging squirrely-ness! Keep on squirrelling, making more squirrels and living out your squirrely part in this symphony of life!)

3- Blessing recognizes something and names it as valuable. 
It thanks God for its place in the whole.  Noticing and speaking truth, recognizing and appreciating, and saying aloud the gifts and benefits, the hopes and intentions of other people and things, this is blessing.

 4- Blessing others blesses us. 
Reminding others of their belovedness makes us live out our belovedness.  It reminds us we are all in this together, and that everything is a gift, (even the hard things).

WHAT BLESSING IS NOT:

 1- “Blessed” does not mean “lucky.” 
It can be the same circumstances, the same good thing happening to you, but to call it lucky
focuses on your worthiness or unworthiness to receive this gift.  It compares you to others who do or don’t get good things, and questions their worthiness or unworthiness.  And makes the gift itself arbitrary.  It’s a way of rejecting the gift even as you accept it – wow, that was lucky!  Subtext, it’s a fluke and I shouldn’t count on it!  
Blessed always goes back to the source.  To say something is a blessing is to say, “I accept this gift as a reminder of God’s good intentions for the world and of my belovedness in God.” 

3- Blessing is not just for "good" things.
Blessing recognizes the holiness that is already there, it reminds us that this place, this person, this opportunity is from God – by existing, it shares in God’s holy purposes, and thus it doesn’t matter what we think of it, whether we think it is worthy or not, God can use everything.
 So Blessing makes us pay attention, it says of any experience,
What might I miss if I don’t take notice? 
What can I appreciate that might open me to more?  
What might come of this?

4- Blessings are NOT something only "special," "holy" people can give.
That means Blessings are not perfection blackmail.  We don’t withhold Blessing until something achieves the “best” version of itself, we don't wait until someone is free of fault and weakness, or some situation is the way we want it to be before we bless it.  That would imply that blessing is earned; but blessing is gift.
In the same way, we don’t refrain from blessing others until we are somehow holy or complete or in a good place.  You can't earn the right to bless, that too is a gift. 

We are called to continually receive life as a gift that speaks of God’s good intentions and how much God loves us, and then to continually give that reminder to others.

WAYS TO BLESS:

1- Notice 
Blessing can be as simple as pausing and noticing, the noisy world waking up, the birds and and sunrise and crisp morning air and giving thanks

 2- Touch
It can be gently laying a hand on your son’s head as he sleeps, holding hands with your beloved, or hugging your friend. Connecting with one another as human beings through touch.

3- Words
It can be speaking out about someone to them- recognizing their strengths, celebrating their humor or their honesty. It can be a friendly greeting to a stranger, expressing a simple thanks to someone in a seemingly ordinary, otherwise overlooked moment.

4- Actions
Blessing can be giving a gift for no reason at all, or reaching out to help someone with whatever their need is in the moment.  It can be doing a loved one's chore for them when they aren't looking, or a random act of kindness for a stranger.  

5- Intentions
Blessing can be simply pausing and holding up a person or situation to God and welcoming God's love and hope upon them.

Opportunities to bless come across our path dozens of times a day. 
This week we are going to watch for them and seize the moment to share blessing.

Pronouncing a blessing puts you as close to God as you can get.  To learn to look with compassion on everything that is…to make the first move toward the other, however many times it takes to get close; to open your arms to what is instead of waiting until it is what it should be, to surrender the justice of your own cause for mercy, to surrender the priority of your own safety for love – this is to land at God’s breast.” 
- Barbara Brown Taylor

Join us, if you'd like, in a week of blessing!
We begin now!


How to Repent (It's not how you think)

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